Monthly Archives: October 2015

So embarrassed that I drove to Willow Glen instead of getting a heavy backpack on and hauling my chores on bike. I got into that parking garage behind the Square, yknow, the new piece with the fountain, and needed to go upstairs. The garage place was crawling with pubescent security guards, so I detained my car at their little podium thing in order to inquire after space on the roof.

Kid says where am I going. I says “up!” He says no, where do I intend to shop. I says wow, they make you ask me that? He assented. I says the bike shop, pointing a hundred meters forward. He then recites this litany that he’d memorized about sorry sir, we don’t cover that store so you hafta pay $20 to park here, etc etc. So I parked down in the neighborhood and hauled my stuff in my hands like I should’ve in the first place. I parked on Blewett street, incidentally, as in Willow Glen Blewett with the the Town Square.

Clearly the yuppies of Willow Glen don’t comprehend what a square is, a traditional market where all the community gathers. When they use the word “square” and then practice dipshit greedy exclusion and predatory parking rules, they miss the meaning of the word completely. I guess they went to the fast food restaurant Bakers Square once and just thought it was a good title.

Shame on me for driving, but fuck Willow Glen business owners and the inbred horse they rode in on! First they want to abolish the road diet on Lincoln including the bike lanes, which is the only sensible thing ever happened in that district, cause it’ll slow down their precious business to their shitshops, walk-in realty nooks and fuckin hair salons, all stuff that only people with time or kids to walk go to. Now this. I said to the kid right on man, they’d better pay you well with that $20. He grunted negatively.

So I know if you read my comics and stuff you probably already don’t go to Willow Glen, but stop now. These inbred billionaire subhumans should be left alone to wither into extinction. Don’t give them your money! I even told the Mike’s Bikes guy (not my favorite bike shop) they gotta get out of this bullshit neighborhood. Boycott for life!

The State of California have recently agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by incarcerated victims of indeterminate periods of solitary confinement in prisons, representing as well inmates thrown into solitary for gang affiliation. The State has promised to change the rules and procedures, but we’ll have to see. Here’s a recent document.

This made me think of the poem I put in my zine Slaver Empire, which you can read in its entirety at Wattpad. This poem was also graciously printed by Raburn Publishing.

The most important thing is that the CDCR, Beard and Brown never get any false credit for any future legislation. Inmates paid for any future progress with their lives, and their lawyers did the best they could.

I got to see Las Cafeteras, a high-energy band from East LA, last night at MACLA, which is probably the hippest art space in San Jose.

What I like most about MACLA is that they start off defining and carefully cultivating the political climate of everything they offer. They don’t stand back and make an empty space for the art like many galleries do (that’s great for some, but I prefer the political honesty and clarity). The second-best thing is that they sell good Gordon Biersch San Jose beer for cheap. They attract stuff you’re not going to see anywhere else, like the play Placas and an exhibition on the 1992 Crayola skin tone crayons that let kids draw with the crayons and write what they thought multiculturalism means. Wait, when the fuck did those crayons happen? I don’t remember this! Did my school turn a blind eye???
Las Cafeteras are all about audience participation, and I really appreciate how they talk about real stuff like student debt and the difficulty of being an artist in this economy. I’m not interested in talking about some spokesperson for some generation, but rather I’ll say simply that I feel like Cafeteras are doing a great job talking to people like me through their music, and there are a lot of people in the situation they describe who’re both ten years younger than me and ten years older.
They did the zapatazo thing, played in son and other rhythms, and ended their set with a call-and-response about gratitude. They sang in both English and Spanish. Their members definitely had an educated folk-revival type vibe. It was an awesome show. The opening act Diana Gameros was pretty great too. Viva MACLA!